"Avitar "Why the attraction

[marshall]

You can't get away from all the promotion for this movie.  Any idea why this is in such demand?  I can't figure it out.  What is the big attaction its a  bloody cartoon! for goodness sake!!!

[ernie]

It is not on my "see list"

[kathleen]

There are so many animated shows on tv these days, too - obnoxious.  I guess they're popular with some.  Margie, Mud and I saw Up and Away Friday - George Clooney plays a traveling consultant who fires people for a living.  Like Ernie, I found it was funny and sad but also a little bubble-gummy.  There were non-Actors who had recently actually been fired whose interviews were made part of the film. 

[anne]

A *lot* of the people I work with loved it -- but you should keep in mind that I work with loads of cg artists. :-)  The artistic work and cohesiveness that brings all the different artistry approaches together is pretty impressive.  I hear that the movie is very breathtaking, and the people who have seen it in IMAX have thoroughly enjoyed it. 

That said, I have also heard that the plot is relatively simplistic, and I've seen jokes that the script is the same as Disney's Pocahontas, if you replace "Pocahontas" and "John Smith" with the names of the main characters from Avatar and make all the natives blue-cat-people.

In the end, it's an action film with a higher level of artistry than most other action films, is my impression.  I think the significance of it is that it pushes a lot of the technical and artistic boundaries that are available to the movie industry these days.  That doesn't make it a good movie, but it does make it  "ground breaking" in many ways.  I find that groundbreakers are often not as good as the subsequent followers that build on what's been learned -- but without them, there would be less progress and artistic growth, yes?

[anne]

Here's that Avatar/Pocahontas plot comparison:

[joe]

Okay, so Margie and Kathleen and I saw Avitar in 3-D IMAX and it was incredible!!  The plot, as noted, is not particularly groundbreaking, but the fact that the film transcends live and CG scenes seamlessly allows you enter the "cartoon dimension" in a way that you never have before.  The computer generated animation here is definitely ground breaking and worth seeing.  It makes all previous special effects pale in comparison.  You actually begin to belive your are part of this world.